Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Introduces the narrator and describes her life before husband number 1.

One

           

            I most definitely have changed since I was last down the aisle.  I can’t believe that it has been only four years since I got divorced for the twentieth time. Yes, you heard it right, the twentieth time. I’ve been married and divorced twenty times. Can you believe it? I have so many wedding dresses that I can open up my own dress shop. It‘s ridiculous, people say, you can’t be serious, marriage, twenty times. I know, people don’t take me seriously when I tell them. It has all been worthwhile and exciting to meet some of the most handsome men in the world. But I don’t brag about them constantly, instead I tell you the story that will go down in history.

            I have a life that many wish they had and sometimes, they’d wish I didn’t marry anybody after husband number four or five. Some people have their own judgments on marriage and life, but I had no opinion. I’d been through it all. Marriage for me equaled happiness, happiness that I never gained, never spent, never neglected, but I didn’t know how to handle my life. Was I supposed to say I don’t or I do? I really didn’t know. I was lost, unaware, reckless, but what’s ironic about my twenty marriages, there was never an annulment. Now annulment, by definition means to dissolve the marriage like it never existed, but when you divorce, you start a battle with your former husband to gain his money or lose your own and legal propositions and custody battles take place. Now I know what you’re thinking, Am I a gold digger for wanting money, especially from a former husband? Well you’re wrong, money to me will never grow on trees, or anything that nature supplies me. Money wasn’t even on my mind. I never relied on a man for money, just happiness, friendship, and love. The love that I wanted so badly from a man that I was afraid I’d never experience.

            As you might’ve already realized, I’m opening up to my audience and that’s what my goal is today, as you’re reading my life in between the lines. You’ll understand that I had no idea that I’d be married twenty times, but I really didn’t understand for more than twenty years why I married uncontrollably. When I turned eighty in 1996, I was marrying my nineteenth husband, Neil, when I realized that I wanted to marry him more than anything, but I never got that feeling with my other husbands. I wondered why. I had six children: one with my first husband, two with my fourth husband, one with my eighth husband, and two with my tenth husband. People ask me if I have twenty children, but I simply tell them no, just six beautiful, amazingly gifted children. Even though, my relationships with their fathers didn’t work out, I still love all six of them very much. They’ve mapped out their lives very well and didn’t follow in the footsteps of their mother regarding marriage.

            I really don’t understand why I really wanted to marry Neil and I didn’t really want to marry the others. I felt pushed into marrying them, not by them or my friends and family, but me. Was I one to blame? What had I been doing all these years, it was like I had an OCD for marriage. I divorced and married shortly after the previous divorce was finalized. In this country and in my mind, divorce is documented, never forgotten.

            Neil and I did divorce and I married my twentieth and final husband, Keth. He was a little strange at first, but I loved him because he was an imitation of my first husband, whom I had missed for ages. Unfortunately, Keth committed suicide, the day after we divorced in June 1999. He didn’t want to be with me anymore, it was making him go crazy, and I didn’t understand why; we got a divorce, I was leaving him.  But I don’t want to get too ahead of myself, so I’ll simply have to tell you later when you’ve learned most of my life because I’m still talking to you. You don’t really know me, besides the fact, that I had twenty husbands and don’t regret any of them, although, it took me nineteen tries, to realize who I wanted to marry and not what I needed to marry.

            Even though all my marriages ended in divorce, there was a reason that both of us agreed upon and now, I hardly mention or think about it. The divorce was like an end of a trail and the beginning of trying to find another one; it was another chance to find a husband.  Even if he wasn’t Mr. Right, I’d marry him just to have happiness and the love that I longed for.

            My first breath was on January 2, 1916 in New York City, New York. I was named Susan Veronica Raymer, after my aunt that had passed away from typhoid fever three months earlier. I was a beautiful baby; I had a chubby face, blonde hair, and turquoise eyes. My parents were Benjamin and Francine Raymer; I also had an older sister, Bethany Roxanne Raymer who was two years old when I was born. We lived in an apartment on 10^th Avenue that had all green walls with green floors. My father used to call it a pickle jar.

            My father was Benjamin Charles Raymer; he was born in Surrey, England on August 24, 1880 to Ernest and Brooke Raymer. They were two wealthy diplomats living in great happiness. My father was one of seven children, him being the middle child. He got everything he wanted, even a horse that he rode as a kid as a competitive equestrian. When my father turned sixteen, he and his mother left England and decided to immigrate to America and eventually become American citizens. They arrived in Ellis Island. They were both stunned as they noticed the magnificent island. When the two arrived on Ellis Island, they took another boat to New York City and settled in a penthouse that my grandfather had bought for the both of them. His father and siblings would be joining him in New York City as soon as they could get there.  My father loved the city; so much opportunity lied in his hands. He enrolled at a small boys’ school not too far from the penthouse and graduated with the Class of 1898 when he was eighteen. However, his mother died two years later, while he was in his second year at New York University. So he traveled back to England to collect his father and siblings, but there was a problem, they weren’t there. My father had no idea where they could be, so he went to their next door neighbor and asked where his father and siblings could’ve gone to, the house was all empty and it was quite, not a peep could be heard. The next-door neighbor said that after his father won a horse race bet; him and the rest of my father’s siblings moved to London and had no plans to go to America. So my father decided to go out on his own and forget about them since they didn’t care about him or his whereabouts.

            After graduating from New York University with a Bachelors Degree in Law, my father sold the penthouse and opened up a law practice with his friend, Margot. Margot and him had been close since college and were starting a romance. So they decided to get hitched. They got married in 1902. He loved her very much until one day when they were moving into their new home, she gives him divorce papers and told him that she was leaving the practice and that he can keep this new home. They got divorced three weeks later. My father was devasted, what did he do wrong? She signed the divorce papers stating irreconcilable differences, he agreed with her.

            He really had enough with women, but he was willing to give marriage another run, when he met my mother in 1904 standing outside his law practice waiting for a taxi. She missed the taxi because they were in love. She loved his sense of humor and wit, she loved that he was smart and had an education. She looked like chicken scratch next to him, she was dressed in rags, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was what was on the inside.

            My mother, Francine Anne Scott was born on September 11, 1887 in Virginia to Anne Scott and an unknown man. Anne had so much trouble trying to find my mother’s birth father, but then again, my grandmother wasn’t sure who it had been. My grandmother, Anne was a bar maid who often slept with strange men, so my mother’s father or my grandfather could’ve been anybody, but since my grandmother couldn’t round up the men she had slept with, my mother went her whole life without knowing her real father. They moved up to New Jersey in 1889, where my grandmother met Oliver Thornberry. Oliver was a CEO of a bank in Trenton, New Jersey and my grandmother took an extreme liking to him, as he could provide for my mother and grandmother. They got married in 1890 and my mother was joined by a half sister or my aunt, Susan Veronica Thornberry in 1892. All of them lived in a small house in Trenton where her stepfather worked. When my mother turned 16 in 1903, she left school and took a job as a seamstress in Trenton. As a seamstress, she was sewing clothes and dresses all day, until she met Frank Friedel, a British diplomat. Frank Friedel was picking up a dress for his mother and he met my mother. The two started dating and were inseparable. However, one night in July of 1905, my mother was going with Frank to his home in Trenton, Frank opened the door to his home, and my mother saw a tall, blonde, blue-eyed woman at the door, as they were about to go inside the house. She asked Frank, “Who’s this?” Frank told her that it was his mistress and they had been together since last week. My mother was extremely angry and disappointed at Frank; he had cheated on her for some cheap s**t, as my mother told me.  My mother and Frank broke up; she moved out of her mother’s home to New York City and took a job as a maid. Her job as a maid was more like being Cinderella because she hardly got paid at all and worked from dusk til dawn for two wealthy New York performers. One day, when she was dressed ever so homely in her usual rags, she ran away from her job and went for a stroll. When her legs gave out from walking all over the city, she waited on the curb in front of my father’s law office for a taxi. They met, it was wonderful.

            My parents married in 1908 after three years of dating. At this time, my father had sold his law office and became a police officer for the New York Police Department after attending the Police Academy. My mother adjusted into her new job as a dressmaker in a dress shop, that my father bought her for a wedding present.  My parents bought an apartment in New York City where they planned to raise their future children, my sister Bethany, and me.

            I was raised as a Catholic from day one.  My parents even got married in a Catholic church. My family and I would go to church every Sunday at St. Andrews in New York City. We would sing the hymns and listen to the gospel readings as we were sitting in the pews. I never found church interesting, but I still went as my parents wanted me to. The church also became like a place where you can meet new people. I met this boy there named Myron. He was an African American boy from Harlem. His parents were former slaves from the South who were looking to gain independence in New York City. Myron’s father had a great interest in Catholicism and wanted to be able to teach it to young people. So he formed a youth group that met at St. Andrews School every Friday after school. I wanted to join to meet new kids and keep my friendship with Myron, but at the time, my parents were a bit skeptical because Myron’s father was black. They didn’t trust him. But when I would mention the youth group to my mother later on in my life, she says that my father and her regret being racist about it and should’ve let me join. The youth group at St. Andrews is still here today, being run by none other than, Myron’s grandson, Hank.  I didn’t join the youth group, but I saw Myron at church every Sunday. We lost touch as we got older. Too bad I never said good-bye.  

            I started school in 1921 at P.S.34 in New York City where I met many friends. One of my best friends was Agatha Agwen. Aggie was just like me, she had an older sister and lived in the same apartment building as I did, but she moved away when we were in first grade, so we didn’t see much of each other after that. Little did I know, I was about to move. My father had a dream of being a silent film actor after seeing many popular silent films with my family, so we decided to move to Los Angeles where he could get a job as an actor. He quit the New York Police Department, my mother sold her dress shop, and we were all off to Los Angeles.

            We moved to Los Angeles in 1923 into a small cottage near a small movie studio. The cottage had three bedrooms like our New York apartment, but it didn’t feel the same since my father wouldn’t be the cop managing the city’s crime. We were away from all the city life; I missed it very much.

            I started school in September 1923; I was in the second grade at Rivers Public School. It was better than P.S.34, but I didn’t have many friends. I met this one girl, Serena, but she and I got into a fight and we weren’t friends anymore. Throughout grade school, I had been miserable. I missed my old life, but this life would have to do.

            My father got an acting job in 1924, as a stage actor in a local theatre; he was paid three dollars a show. It was enough money to keep us going, but soon after, my mother got the acting bug and joined him on stage. They formed their own performance duo as Cindy and the Bandit. My mother played the cowgirl Cindy and the bandit was my father. Together, they made six dollars a show, which was great. My sister and I saw as many of their shows as we could, since my sister had a busy life and I was floating out there, trying to make some friends.

            By the time I entered seventh grade, I was starting to notice some changes of my own. I got my first period in the winter of 1928 during a ski trip to the Alps. I told my mother that I saw blood in the toilet and we sat down and had a discussion about what just happened. “You got your period!” she said gladly. She gave me a Kotex and told me to change them every time I went to the bathroom or whenever I had a heavy flow and needed to have a clean pad.

            I also noticed that my breasts were starting to grow; they had started developing since I was in fifth grade, but took shape in seventh grade. My chest was a size 34C, which was above average for my age. My mother even said that I wasn’t done developing and there was more to come. So I thought what could that possibly be, I had it all. Big breasts, a period, and all those mood swings. I was also starting to look like my parents, I had dirty blonde hair like my mother, turquoise eyes like my father, and I was around 5’3 like my mother. What else could be next?

            I graduated middle school in 1930. In New York City, the Great Depression had been through a year already. People lost their jobs and some lost everything. It hit California’s economy as well, Mexican American workers were being discriminated, and some people lost their jobs. My parents’ theatre act came to an end a year later in 1931 and they were in search of a new job.

            My mother and father looked upon the new horizons and noticed that silent films were a thing of the past; the talkies were all about town, so my parents hired an agent and tried to find work. 

            In 1932, my parents completed their first movie together. It was called, “The Dream,” it was about a man and a woman in search of a dream for their underprivileged daughter during the time of the Great Depression. “The Dream” got good and bad reviews but put my parents in the hot seat in Hollywood. They weren’t as famous as Shirley Temple, but they were well-known. I saw it during its initial release with my sister, who was now nineteen working as a makeup artist for Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. She had moved out to live with, her new husband, Greg Moller, a paper boy from Sacramento.

            Since my parents’ success in one movie led them to another, my parents and I moved out of our small cottage in Los Angeles in 1933 and into a miniature mansion in another area in Los Angeles.  I had been attending Los Angeles High School and would still be attending there until my graduation in June 1934.  

            I was a junior in high school in 1933 with tons of friends. I was developed and I couldn’t be happier. I also had feelings that I never felt before toward this boy in my grade, his name was Garrett Lawson.